Hollywood Hackers

Duncan Frissell frissell at panix.com
Mon Jul 29 11:25:37 PDT 2002


Congressman Wants to Let Entertainment Industry Get Into Your Computer

      Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., formally proposed
      legislation that would give the industry unprecedented new
      authority to secretly hack into consumers' computers or knock
      them off-line entirely if they are caught downloading
      copyrighted material.

I've been reading things like this for a while but I wonder how practical
such an attack would be. They won't be able to hack into computers with
reasonable firewalls and while they might try DOS attacks, upstream
connectivity suppliers might object. Under current P2P software they may
be able to do a little hacking but the opposition will rewrite the
software to block. DOS attacks and phony file uploads can be defeated
with digital signatures and reputation systems (including third party
certification). Another problem -- Napster had 55 million customers.
That's a lot of people to attack. I don't think Hollywood has the troops.

DCF





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